Street Food - Roti Chai style

Roti Chai has been on our ‘to do’ list ever since it opened in 2011. Last Sunday lunchtime we finally got round to trying it out. I had voted for one of the Drummond Street Indian vegetarian buffets. Chutneys @ £6.95 / person would have fitted the bill – I think I was nostalgic for my early 20s and student days – but I was voted down. Or rather (as the voting was 1-1), persuaded down.

Roti Chai was started by Rohit Chugh, an ex-Goldman Sachs equities trader. This had actually put me off going for quite a while as I cynically thought it was just an investment venture, a commercial enterprise rather than being run for the love of good food (the two obviously not being mutually exclusive). Chugh, had, however, worked for the Cinnamon Club after leaving the City and then helped set up the Cinnamon Kitchen before starting Roti Chai – so he did come with some kind of food pedigree background. His father apparently is from Amritsar which helped to seal the authenticity of the venture.

The menu is divided into a street food menu and a more expensive dining room menu. We went for the street food, although I am not sure the dining room part was open on a Sunday.  The décor is simple, deliberately basic café-style seating with kitsch Indian adverts decorating the walls.  I know what Chugh was trying to achieve – a modern take on an Indian café theme, though it did feel slightly contrived, slightly too stylised. Reminiscent perhaps of Haldiram’s in India.  It was good to see quite a few Indian diners there.

The menu is short and fairly simple. For starters, we had the bhel puri and papri chat. Both were good and well presented – though nothing particularly out of the ordinary. I can probably get the equivalent for at least half the price at the stall in the Quality Foods supermarket in Hounslow. A few more fresh ingredients: onion, cucumber and fresh coriander might have been nice in the bhel puri.

For mains, I had the idli sambar - always keen to branch out from the usual North Indian food on offer. Susen had the chicken Manchurian – chosen because of its Bengali roots (of course!) Again, good food but nothing special. A thought did come into my mind, whilst eating my sambar, that it reminded me of a slightly spicy version of tinned Heinz lentil and vegetable casserole pureed baby food I used to eat well into my toddler years as I liked it so much. That thought didn’t help too much with the appreciation of any subtle sophisticated grown-up spicing that might have been going on in the dish.

Our meal was washed down with Mongoose beer – which is trying to rival Cobra in the Indian food market. Mongoose looked convincingly Indian in origin, until we saw that it was brewed in Bedford which didn’t have quite the same ring to it.

One good point is its location – tucked away behind Oxford Street, close to Marble Arch. Good, therefore for lunch or dinner away from the Oxford Street crowds - though why anyone actually wants to actually go shopping in Oxford Street is beyond me.

Our lunch came to £46.00 for the 2 of us (including 4 beers between us). You could probably get the same or better in Southall for quite a bit less – or any number of other urban Indian eateries in every major town. Probably around 6/10 rating overall.

Roti Chai – 3 Portman Mews South, London W1H 6HS

www.rotichai.com